Training Industry Quarterly - Fall 2013 - (Page 15)

21st CENTURY TRAINING | CONNIE MALAMED WE ARE ADDICTED TO SEEKING AND FINDING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES TO MANAGE INFORMATION OVERLOAD Knowledge workers are increasingly responsible for their own learning and professional development. One critical obstacle standing in the way of success is information overload. Information overload is more than an emotional reaction to constant mental stimulation. That overwhelmed feeling is a natural result of our limited working memory; we can only process around four bits of information at one time. Not only are we bombarded with information, we are apparently addicted to seeking and finding it. But the situation isn’t hopeless. Technologies and strategies for personal knowledge management can help you separate the signal from the noise. Here are some technologies to help better manage information overload. CLIP ARTICLES TO READ LATER If you find yourself doing lots of research with no time to read the articles, try web clipping tools. These online applications save all or a portion of a webpage for later reading. Clipped content is typically synchronized, so you can read it on your smartphone, tablet or desktop computer. Compare the features of these popular clip-and-read-later tools: Evernote, Instapaper, Readability and Pocket. Create a weekly or daily time slot for reading so your “read later” list won’t turn into another source of overwhelm. READ FILTERED CONTENT You probably don’t have extra hours to sift through your favorite online newspapers and blogs. Take advantage of the social space and the work of individual curators to filter content for you. • On social news sites like Digg, readers vote articles up or down. The best or most popular ones float to the first page. • Aggregator sites, such as All-Top, collect the latest headlines from websites and blogs and organize them by topic. • Curation platforms, like Scoop.It, make it easy for curators to hand-pick articles of interest on a specific subject. IMPROVE FINDABILITY If you haven’t made the switch to online bookmarking, it’s time to start. With services like Diigo, Pinboard and Delicious, you’ll never have to search through browser bookmarks again. Yet, online bookmarks alone won’t minimize information overload. The key to a powerful bookmark collection is in the taxonomy you create to classify and organize links. Effective and thoughtful tagging improves the success of finding what you want in a minimal amount of time. To streamline tags, use the same keywords and phrases you typically enter for searches. Remove redundant tags and singular and plural forms of the same word. Finally, delete tags that point to links that are no longer of interest or are irrelevant through aging. Keep your tags current and clean. CAPTURE INFORMATION QUICKLY You can speed up and simplify web clipping, bookmarking and similar actions by adding bookmarklets to your browser. Bookmarklets are snippets of programming code that display in a browser to increase its functionality. They may be a better choice than browser add-ons, which have a reputation for slowing down the browser. You can find bookmarklets for various tools on each publisher’s site. AVOIDING INFORMATION OVERLOAD Clipping online articles and using a filtered approach to reading will enhance the effort you devote to personal learning. The use of online bookmarks, bookmarklets for your browser, and effective tagging will speed up your research. Learning consultant, Harold Jarche, writes that “Disciplined personal knowledge management brings focus to the information sea we swim in.” You can take advantage of existing technologies to save yourself from drowning. Connie Malamed is publisher of theelearningcoach.com and author of “Visual Language For Designers” and the iPhone app, Instructional Design Guru. Email Connie. Training Industry Quarterly, Fall 2013 / A Training Industry, Inc. magazine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ 15 http://www.theelearningcoach.com http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Quarterly - Fall 2013

From Where I Sit: The Sustainability of MOOCs
Table of Contents
Ad Index
Guest Editor: Top Five Learning Technologies to Watch
We Need to Support Learning, Not Manage It
Supercharge Your Next Leadership Initiative
Boomers & the Technology Gap
Technologies to Manage Information Overload
It's Time to Invest in the 'Performance Zone'
Inroducing Simulation into Learning Technologies: Examining the Key Considerations
The Evolution of the LMS
Bringing Your Mojo to the Virtual Classroom
Merging Social Learning and Technology to Achieve Business Outcomes
Optimizing Workforce Learning and Performance
Badges: Bridging the Higher Education and Workforce Gap
Integrating Video into Training
Tools for Supporting Sales Coaching
Tweet Suite
Company News

Training Industry Quarterly - Fall 2013